The Narrator breaks in:
I always am fearful when I read that my friends are headed for danger. And that fear increases when I do not hear from them the next day. And so it is now as the diary entry lays empty before me.
Not even a scribble this time.
I know my sleep will be fitful until I hear from them again. All of them.
I do so wish that there were something I could do to help.
Meribabell writes:
We set ourselves to take the long way around via the river route. It was easy going for the morning, but by the time the sun passed its apex [The Narrator: the wording actually read- “when the sun settled overhead” but I felt it needed a clarification for human understanding] the way narrowed and filled with boulders over which we paused to help Gibley and the hatchling.
Dunfallon reported in to say that it will be more of the same ahead. He was almost apologetic about it, as if it were his fault. I encouraged him to keep on the lookout for other possibilities.
A couple of times the hatchling let go of the training staff and took her first steps. We allowed her to continue to do so whenever the way leveled off. But if she gets too far away from us, Gibley waves the training staff, and so far she obediently returns to it.
At day’s end I composed a note to the High Fairy relating our news and asking for some from him. Especially in regards to Merlin and his dragon hatchling.
The Narrator continues:
At last I awoke in my dream. And I saw my friends – one at a time – being held bound in separate places. Though I could make out their pensive faces, in no instance could I see the face of their captors.
I wanted so badly to help them. My helplessness brought me to tears.
The Narrator continues:
I have been waiting for the dreams to start. Perhaps I am trying too hard. Trying to force it. Not allowing it just to happen.
But I came to the realization that the loneliness I was sensing was not at all within myself – rather that feeling was the overriding emotion of Meribabell and his friends.
The Narrator writes:
I was struck with horror upon checking the diary today.
There on the page was the single word “Then” followed by a scrawl that filled the remainder of the page.
It filled me with a horrible apprehension for my friends traveling the Low-way of the dwarves.
The Narrator writes:
I put off opening the diary this morning. Its appearance was darker than usual. In fact, sitting there on my desk it seemed to be sucking the light from the room, making all around me a couple of shades dimmer than usual.
At last I unlocked the cover and the pages fell open with a burst of light.
Though there was still no new entry, hope soared in me again.
The Narrator continues:
I eagerly opened the diary this morning in hopes of anything from Meribabell.
The instant I did, a splash of water poured off the page and onto my lap.
I hung the diary up to dry out. Thankfully nothing within was adversely affected as far as I could ascertain.
The Narrator breaks in:
When I opened the diary today, there was no new writing added to the end. It was highly upsetting, in the light of Meribabell’s last entry, though I must add that I was half expecting it. All last night his final line ran over and over in my mind.
How I wish I could see what is transpiring!
Then – before my watching eyes a blotch of ink appeared on the page and spread in a flurry of scribbles.
And then stopped.
The Narrator stumbles in:
There I was minding my own business when I took a step backward to admire my handiwork (the fresh coat of paint on the wall of my bedroom) and stepped into another reality where I saw my “friends” from the diary held up in a thicket outside the frontier village.
Well, almost all of them.
Rumble and Dunfallon were nowhere in sight.
And Meribabell lay in wait at the edge of a copse staring after a flock of black birds inscribing a boomerang shaped path in the sky. As both of us followed their progress on a sudden their grouping was smashed asunder by the swoop of the pixie astride his eagle.
The leader of the black birds recovered and lit out from the wrath of the avenging duo.
And as I strained forward to see what happened next, I stepped back into my reality.
The Narrator breaks in again:
For two nights in a row I have been on tenterhooks. A sense of impending doom pervaded my actions during the day, and intensified over night. I would look up quickly from what I was doing and see only blackness. The loss of vision was fleeting, but none the less disturbing.
Then last night, the dream started as my clock rolled to midnight. Least ways it did in my dream. And I could see the three beings whose adventures I have been following rush about in a frenzy upon the ramparts of what I judged to be the dwarves outpost that I’ve read about. The blackness was rolling towards them. A solid nothingness.
I looked again at their movements and realized they were not moving haphazardly, but with purpose, and somehow it broke up the blackness into component parts, so that the approaching enemy was visible. I turned and noticed that the Merlin talisman around Meribabell’s neck was doing the illumination.
In its beam of light a cadaverous troll was stumbling up to the redoubt led by a ravenous wolf on a leash.
I was aware in that instant the stone of the rampart beneath the soles of my bare feet. A golden eagle flashed past my ear and I forgot about my cold feet.
It was the pixie charging the wolf, and having gained its attention, baited it into the entrance of the outpost, where both troll and wolf fell to the onslaught of Rumble and the dwarves.
As their adversaries melted away, I, too, faded from the scene.
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